A sustainable life is built on choices and trade-offs. You can reduce your environmental impact in a variety of ways, and if everyone were to reduce their footprint by half — no matter which parts of their environmental footprint — it would help push governments and companies to make significant changes for the better. In this Earth911 quiz, we challenge you to make smart choices that shape your shade of green.
The first-ever detailed study of climate anxiety among the UK adult population suggests that whilst rates are currently low, people’s fears about the future of the planet might be an important trigger for action when it comes to adapting our high-carbon lifestyles to become more environmentally friendly.
Interest in climate or eco-anxiety — characterised by the American Psychological Association as the chronic fear of environmental doom that comes from observing the impacts of climate change — has risen over recent years. A high-profile University of Bath study in 2021 found it to be particularly prevalent among young people right across the world.
This latest study, led by a team from the Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, also based at the University of Bath, sought the views of 1,338 UK adults over two time points (in 2020 and 2022) to delve deeper into the prevalence of climate anxiety, factors that predict it, and whether it could predict individual behavioural changes and climate action.
Despite over three-quarters of the UK public saying they are worried about climate change, only 4.6% of the public reported experiencing climate anxiety in 2022 (only fractionally higher than in 2020, when 4% reported this). Younger people and those with higher generalised anxiety were more likely to experience eco-anxiety.
However, climate anxiety was not always a negative; for many it could be a motivating force for taking action to reduce emissions. This included saving energy, buying second-hand, borrowing, renting, or repurposing items. Lifestyle changes such as cutting down on red meat were not related to climate anxiety, despite being highly effective for reducing emissions.
Significantly, the study found that media exposure — for example TV images of raging storms or heatwaves — rather than direct, personal experiences of climate impacts predicted climate anxiety. The authors say there are important implications of these findings for organisations responsible for communicating climate change.
The study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology coincides with a new briefing paper from the Centre for Climate Change & Social Transformations focused on UK public preferences for low-carbon lifestyles. Its analysis suggests that lifestyle changes (for example, reducing car use or eating less meat), are increasingly seen as both feasible and desirable.
Environmental psychologist at the University of Bath, Professor Lorraine Whitmarsh MBE, led the study. She explained: “With increasing media coverage of climate impacts, such as droughts and fires in the UK and devastating flooding in Pakistan, climate anxiety may well increase. Our findings suggest this can spur some people to take action to help tackle the issue — but we also know there are barriers to behaviour change that need to be addressed through more government action.”
In the paper, the authors emphasise the importance of the media as a motivating force for the lifestyle changes required as we decarbonise. They suggest that the media and public discourse about climate anxiety has the power to create a positive vision for a greener, cleaner future which is significantly less dependent on fossil fuels.
Lois Player, co-author of the study also from the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath, explained: “Our results suggest that the media could play an important role in creating positive pro-environmental behaviour change, but only if they carefully communicate the reality of climate change without inducing a sense of hopelessness.”
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Materials provided by University of Bath. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
A rainforest activist from one of Brazil’s leading Indigenous protection groups has been killed just weeks after participating in an Amazon assembly organised by the murdered Indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira.
Janildo Oliveira Guajajara, a member of the Guardiões da Floresta (Forest Guardians) collective, was reportedly shot dead in the early hours of Saturday near the Araribóia Indigenous territory where he lived.
Carlos Travassos, an Indigenous expert who works with the group in Maranhão state, said he was the sixth Forest Guardian to be murdered since 2016.
“We still don’t know exactly what motivated this but we presume it was some kind of retaliation,” added Travassos, who said eyewitness reports suggested the victim was ambushed and shot from behind while visiting the town of Amarante do Maranhão.
“We want authorities to investigate but everything suggests he was killed because he was a Guardian.”
Civil police chief César Veloso told local media Guajajara was returning from an Indigenous celebration when he was attacked. His teenage nephew was also shot but survived.
Guajajara was one of dozens of Indigenous activists who gathered in the Araribóia territory in July to exchange tips on rainforest protection.
The week-long summit, at which the Guardian’s reporters were present, was being organised by Bruno Pereira until June when he was murdered in the Amazon’s Javari Valley with British journalist Dom Phillips.
The meeting was attended by the Araribóia’s Guajajara inhabitants as well as Indigenous activists from the Javari Valley representing the Matis, Marubo, Kanamari and Mayoruna peoples.
At the summit, Forest Guardian volunteers described their perilous quest to keep illegal loggers from invading their supposedly protected territory.
Zé Guajajara, whose cousin was murdered in 2019, said he was now too scared to travel to nearby logging towns such as Amarante.
“I feel like a prisoner,” he admitted, nevertheless vowing to continue fighting for his ancestral lands. “If they kill me, I believe God will put me in a good place because I didn’t just die for myself. I died for the people – just like Bruno.”
Antônio Marcos de Oliveira, the retired police officer who trains the Guardians, said: “This is a hidden war, but it’s a war. And it’s a war in which we’re at a total disadvantage because we receive no reinforcements, no support, the media hardly reports on it because it doesn’t do anything for their ratings … and as far as I can tell, there’s absolutely no political will to fight or at least try to improve this situation.”
Travassos, a former top official at Brazil’s Indigenous agency, Funai, said Saturday’s murder showed how the dismantling of government protections under president Jair Bolsonaro had exposed activists to growing danger.
“If you have a chicken coop and you take away your guard dog, the fox is going to invade,” Travassos said during the Araribóia exchange. “That’s what Bolsonaro did. He removed the only protection these places had.”
The results have been tragic for the Amazon and its original inhabitants. Since Bolsonaro took power in 2019 deforestation has soared and attacks on Indigenous communities risen.
Activists now warn that, with Bolsonaro seemingly likely to lose power in October’s election, environmental criminals are engaged in a last-minute scramble to destroy the Amazon before a new government takes a tougher line.
Global fish stocks will not be able to recover to sustainable levels without strong actions to mitigate climate change, a new study has projected.
Researchers at UBC, the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions and University of Bern projected the impact that different global temperature increases and ranges of fishing activity would have on biomass, or the amount of fish by weight in a given area, from 1950 to 2100. Their simulations suggest that climate change has reduced fish stocks in 103 of 226 marine regions studied, including Canada, from their historical levels. These stocks will struggle to rebuild their numbers under projected global warming levels in the 21st century.
“More conservation-oriented fisheries management is essential to rebuild over-exploited fish stocks under climate change. However, that alone is not enough,” says lead author Dr. William Cheung, professor in the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF). “Climate mitigation is important for our fish stock rebuilding plans to be effective.”
The research team, including co- author Dr. Colette Wabnitz of Stanford Centre for Ocean Solutions, used computer models to find out the climate change levels at which over-exploited fish stocks cannot rebuild. Currently, the world is on track to exceed 1.5 degrees of warming relative to preindustrial levels and approach two degrees in the next few decades, says Dr. Cheung.
The study projected that, on average, when fisheries management focuses on the highest sustainable catch per year, the additional climate impacts on fish at 1.8 degrees Celsius warming would see fish stocks unable to rebuild themselves.
If people around the world fished only three quarters of the annual highest sustainable catch, fish stocks would be unable to rebuild at a higher degree of warming, 4.5 degrees.
“Tropical ecoregions in Asia, the Pacific, South America and Africa are experiencing declining fish populations as species both move further north to cooler waters and are also unable to recover due to fishing demands,” said Dr. Cheung. “These regions are the ones that feel the effects of global warming first and our study shows that even a slight increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius could have a catastrophic effect on tropical nations that are dependent on fisheries for food and nutrition security, revenue, and employment.”
In a worst-case scenario, where nothing is done to mitigate global warming, including meeting internationally agreed targets, and where overfishing beyond sustainable targets occurs, fish stocks globally would drop to 36 per cent of current levels, the study projects.
“To rebuild fish stocks, climate change must be fully considered,” said co-author Dr. Juliano Palacios-Abrantes, IOF postdoctoral fellow. “We live in a globalized world, where situations are interconnected. We are seeing this most significantly in tropical regions, but also in the Arctic, where many exploited species are slow to mature, or Ireland, Canada and the USA, with high fishing mortality rates. These climate effects, even when we looked at conservation-focused scenarios, are making it too difficult for fish stocks to bounce back.”
Dr. Cheung says that due to climate change, the world is unlikely to return to historical levels of fish stocks. “We are at a turning point. What we need is a coordinated global effort to develop practical and equitable marine conservation measures to support effective biomass rebuilding under climate change,” he added. “These need to recognize the ways that marine biodiversity contributes to livelihood and economies, particularly in tropical marine ecoregions, as well as requiring more stringent limits on fishing activities to achieve greater biomass rebuilding potential.”
Researchers have found a naturally occurring compound, known as hydroquinine, has bacterial killing activity against several microorganisms.
Antimicrobial resistance has become one of the greatest threats to public health globally. It occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines, making it difficult to treat infections. Because of this, there is a pressing need for the development of new antimicrobial drugs to combat infections.
A new study by scientists from the University of Portsmouth and Naresuan and Pibulsongkram Rajabhat Universities in Thailand explored whether hydroquinine, which is found in the bark of some trees, could inhibit any bacterial strains. Hydroquinine is already known to be an effective agent against malaria in humans, but until now there has been little investigation into its drug-resistant properties.
The findings, published in the Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease journal, suggest the antimicrobial properties of the organic compound make it a potential candidate for future clinical investigation.
Dr Robert Baldock from the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Portsmouth, said: “Using bacterial killing experiments, we found that hydroquinine was able to kill several microorganisms including the common multidrug-resistant pathogen pseudomonas aeruginosa.
“Characteristically, we also discovered that one of the main mechanisms used by these bacteria to escape killing activity of the drug was upregulated with treatment — indicating a robust response from the bacteria.
“By studying this compound further, our hope is that it may in future offer another line of treatment in combatting bacterial infections.”
Drug-resistant bacteria occur in more than 2.8 million infections and are responsible for 35,000 deaths per year. Common antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” cause diseases including sepsis, urinary tract infections, and pneumonia. Statistics show bloodstream infections with the bacteria — P. aeruginosa are associated with high mortality rates of between 30 and 50%.
The study recommends further investigation into the antimicrobial resistance properties and side effects of hydroquinine.
Dr Jirapas Jongjitwimol from the Department of Medical Technology at Naresuan University added: “Our future research aims to uncover the molecular target of hydroquinine. This would help our understanding of how the compound works against pathogenic bacteria and how it could potentially be used in a clinical setting.”
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Materials provided by University of Portsmouth. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
On July 1, 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard NASA’s Terra satellite acquired this image of the Great Lakes. Credit: NASA/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
State air quality planning agencies in the U.S. Great Lakes region are now using models custom-designed by NASA to monitor ground-level ozone pollution, informing their decisions on how to best meet federal air quality standards to protect public health.
Assessing how the unique weather along Lake Michigan’s shoreline affects ground-level ozone is no easy task – the complex lake and land breezes across the Great Lakes area result in high levels of this type of air pollution and make it difficult to monitor. But it’s vital to understanding how this pollution circulates in the region. With NASA Earth observations, states can better understand how to account for the complex variations in wind patterns and pressure differences along the shores of Lake Michigan.
Ozone pollution at the surface is dangerous for human health and a greenhouse gas that can contribute to climate change – but the increase in temperatures driven by climate change can also cause more frequent high-ozone days for local communities. Unhealthy amounts of ground-level ozone pollution can aggravate lung diseases such as asthma, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis, and increase the frequency of asthma attacks – especially in children and the elderly. That’s why states are required to meet federal air quality standards.
In addition to wind and weather, NASA provides other Earth observations that affect the complex environment around the Great Lakes – such as lake surface temperature and vegetation data. So while the unique weather of the Lake Michigan shoreline can create pockets of high levels of ground-level ozone, NASA Earth observations can help decision makers understand how the unique weather of the Great Lakes region impacts levels of this greenhouse gas in their communities.
More about this project can be found in the NASA Earth Applied Sciences Program story, Tracking Ozone Pollution in the Great Lakes Region.
Record-breaking heat waves have occurred recently from Delhi to the Pacific Northwest, and the number of these deadly events is expected to increase. New research from the University of Washington and Harvard University gives a range of heat impacts worldwide by the end of this century, depending on future emissions of greenhouse gases.
The study was published Aug. 25 in the open-access journal Communications Earth & Environment.
“The record-breaking heat events of recent summers will become much more common in places like North America and Europe,” said lead author Lucas Vargas Zeppetello, who did the research as a doctoral student at the UW and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard. “For many places close to the equator, by 2100 more than half the year will be a challenge to work outside, even if we begin to curb emissions.”
“Our study shows a broad range of possible scenarios for 2100,” he added. “This shows that the emissions choices we make now still matter for creating a habitable future.”
The study looks at a combination of air temperature and humidity known as the “heat index” that measures impact on the human body. A “dangerous” heat index is defined by the National Weather Service as 103 F (39.4 C). An “extremely dangerous” heat index is 124 F (51 C), deemed unsafe to humans for any amount of time.
“These standards were first created for people working indoors in places like boiler rooms — they were not thought of as conditions that would happen in outdoor, ambient environments. But we are seeing them now,” Vargas Zeppetello said.
The study finds that even if countries manage to meet the Paris Agreement goal of keeping warming to 2 C, crossing the “dangerous” threshold will be three to 10 times more common by 2100 in the U.S., Western Europe, China and Japan. In that same scenario, dangerous days could double by 2100 in the tropics, covering half the year.
In a worst-case scenario in which emissions remain unchecked until 2100, “extremely dangerous” conditions, in which humans should not be outdoors for any amount of time, could become common in countries closer to the equator — notably in India and sub-Saharan Africa.
“It’s extremely frightening to think what would happen if 30 to 40 days a year were exceeding the extremely dangerous threshold,” Vargas Zeppetello said. “These are frightening scenarios that we still have the capacity to prevent. This study shows you the abyss, but it also shows you that we have some agency to prevent these scenarios from happening.”
The study uses a probability-based method to calculate the range of future conditions. Instead of using the four future emissions pathways included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, the authors use a statistical approach that combines historical data with population projections, economic growth and carbon intensity — the amount of carbon emitted for each dollar of economic activity — to predict the likely range of future CO2 concentrations.
The statistical approach “gives plausible ranges for carbon emissions and future temperature and has been estimated statistically from and validated against historical data,” said co-author Adrian Raftery, a UW professor of statistics and of sociology with an adjunct appointment in atmospheric sciences.
The authors translated the higher carbon dioxide levels into a range of global temperature increases, then looked at how that would affect global monthly weather patterns.
“The number of days with dangerous levels of heat in the mid-latitudes — including the southeastern and central U.S. — will more than double by 2050,” said co-author David Battisti, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the UW. “Even for the very low-end estimates of carbon emissions and climate response, by 2100 much of the tropics will experience ‘dangerous’ levels of heat stress for nearly half the year.”
The results underline the need to both reduce future greenhouse gas emissions and to protect populations, especially outdoor workers, against dangerous heat. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Tamaki Foundation.
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Materials provided by University of Washington. Original written by Hannah Hickey. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Here’s a trick question. Can #1 plastics — otherwise known as PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastics — go in the recycling bin?
Bet you thought the answer was yes. That’s only half right. It’s a trick question because the answer’s complicated. Most curbside recycling programs accept #1 plastics for recycling, but only certain forms of it. Bottles that hold various products—shampoo, salad dressing, water, and soda — are almost always accepted. Other types of #1 plastic containers — made by a method called thermoforming — are not accepted or used in the recycling stream.
That may be about to change.
Thermoforming is a method of creating packaging by stretching a heated sheet of plastic over a mold to make a desired shape. Clamshell containers — which have a hinged side similar to clams — are one common type of thermoformed packaging. These containers are used to package salad greens, berries, cherry tomatoes, bakery items, egg cartons, and more. They cannot be recycled with PET bottles because the two types of plastic, although both categorized as #1 plastic, are chemically different and melt at different temperatures.
As far as plastic packaging goes, thermoformed packaging isn’t all bad. It:
If we could recover more thermoform packaging and add it to the recycling stream, it would represent a positive step toward reducing waste and the need for drilling more oil to support our packaging needs.
There’s a growing demand for recycled PET, especially in the textile industry, which uses it to make polyester. If we can introduce efficient recycling technology, those thermoformed #1 plastic clamshells do have value.
Even though it is highly recyclable, the recycling rates for PET plastic packaging are disappointing. Lack of access to recycling systems and low participation among consumers and businesses contribute to poor recycling rates.
As of 2020:
That means that way too much recoverable PET plastic is taking up space in our landfills or incinerated. At the same time, more oil is needed to make virgin plastics used in packaging.
There are challenges to recycling PET thermoform packaging, which is why it often goes to waste. These are some of the problems:
None of this means we can’t do better. In fact, there is an array of stakeholders working to improve the circularity of PET packaging.
A few years ago, Driscoll’s, the berry company, recognized the lost opportunities of thermoform-to-thermoform recycling. In collaboration with packaging suppliers, a materials recovery facility (MRF), and other industry brands, Driscoll’s became part of The Alliance for PET Thermoform Recycling to remove barriers to thermoform recycling.
In 2021, Driscoll’s and their suppliers achieved a 9% rate of rPET thermoform packaging in their clamshell packaging. Before then, their suppliers used rPET from bottles, but not from thermoform packaging. (Overall, Driscoll’s clamshells use about 80% rPET — including 40% pre-consumer content, 30% rPET from bottles, and 21% virgin plastic.)
The success of this type of material-specific collaboration may serve as a model for other challenging materials in the recycling stream.
Another collaboration comes from The Recycling Partnership. In June 2022, it launched its PET Recycling Coalition, which is working to improve the circularity of PET recycling. Its purpose is to create “scalable solutions to packaging and system challenges” and accelerate “the shift to a circular economy that uses fewer finite resources.”
As stated on its website, the Recycling Partnership’s plans include:
The success of PET circularity initiatives will come largely from industry and infrastructure. But you can play a role, too.
Send a message that you prefer sustainable alternatives. Buy products made with recycled #1 plastics or biodegradable packaging. When you are shopping, read the package to see if it’s made from recycled content. If brands put in the effort and expense to source rPET, they’ll let you know. Look for the term “post-consumer content” and a percentage.
Call your recycling company and see which #1 plastics they accept. It’s tempting to toss everything with a #1 on it in the bin. If the company doesn’t accept it, though, that’s called wish-cycling and can do more harm than good.
Do your bit by sorting plastics at home and ensuring they are clean and dry when placed in your recycling bin. Be careful not to put thermoformed plastics in the bin if your recycling system does not accept them. But there may be a store or other location where you can drop off these plastics for recycling. Ask your local recycler and also search the Earth911 database for a drop-off location near you. Nothing happens in our recycling system until you take the first step.
Support extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation at state and local levels. EPR programs can include deposit and incentive programs that make it profitable to collect recyclables. Take the time to ask your local waste management office to add comprehensive recycling for all plastics, not just #1 plastic.
It’s not just the land that is groaning under the heat — the ocean is also suffering from heatwaves. In the Mediterranean Sea along the Italian and Spanish coasts, for example, water temperatures are currently up to 5 °C higher than the long-term average at this time of year. Scientists have investigated marine heatwaves for a few years now — for example at the University of Bern. However, relatively little is known about how marine heatwaves co-occur with other extreme events in the ocean. Such events are known as compound events and considered to be a major risk of climate change. While the processes that lead to extreme events on land, such as floods, forest fires, heatwaves, or droughts and how they interact with each other have been intensively studied in the past, the finding that ocean weather and climate extreme events can also occur in combination is relatively new.
A group of researchers at the Oeschger Center for Climate Change Research, led by Thomas Frölicher, has now investigated whether marine heatwaves co-occur in combination with extreme events in other potential marine ecosystem stressors. In addition to heat, potential stressors also include high acidity levels in the ocean. “For the first time, we have quantified the frequency of compound events in which marine heatwaves happen together with extreme acidity,” says Friedrich Burger, postdoctoral researcher and first author of the study just published in the journal Nature Communications. Extreme events of high ocean acidity are occurrences where the proton concentration in seawater is higher than normal.
Compound events especially frequent in the subtropical oceans
The main finding of the study, which is based on monthly observations from the surface open ocean from 1982 to 2019, is that marine heatwaves and extreme ocean acidity events occur relatively often together. This means that the negative impacts of past marine heatwaves were potentially exacerbated by extreme acidic conditions. “We can show,” says ocean modeler Friedrich Burger, “that these compound events are most common in the subtropical oceans, but comparably rare in the high latitudes and tropical Pacific.”
The co-occurrence of marine heatwaves and ocean acidity extremes in regions such as the subtropical oceans is caused by an increase in acidity at higher temperatures. However, if the
temperature increase causes also other effects, such as less mixing of relatively more acidic subsurface water with surface water, a heatwave can also reduce acidity and thus decrease the frequency of compound events. This happens in the Southern Ocean or the tropical Pacific. “To determine the relative frequency of combined extreme events, it is crucial to understand the effects of heatwaves on the circulation, biology, and chemistry of the respective ocean region” says Jens Terhaar, co-author of the study.
Compound events in the ocean are increasing strongly
As a result of climate change and continuing CO2 emissions, extreme events such as marine heatwaves and ocean acidity extremes will continue to increase in frequency, and so will compound marine heatwave and ocean acidity extreme events. Earth system model simulations conducted by the Bern researchers show that the number of days in which marine heatwaves and high acidity events co-occur increases 22-fold at a global warming of 2 °C compared to pre-industrial conditions. “This large projected increase may have severe impacts on marine ecosystems,” said Thomas Frölicher, co-author.
A team led by Frölicher had already shown the impact of marine heatwaves in a 2018 Nature study. The conclusion was that ocean heatwaves can irreversibly damage ecosystems and may pose a threat to fisheries. Although there is evidence that marine organisms can be further harmed by the concurrence of warm and acidic seawater conditions, still relatively little is known about the biological effects of co-occurrences of marine heatwaves and ocean acidity extremes.
This study was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.
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Materials provided by University of Bern. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
The oil company Esso has secured an interim high court injunction to prevent environmental protesters disrupting construction work on a 105km-long aviation fuel pipeline.
Activists have targeted efforts to replace most of the underground Southampton to London pipeline by interfering with equipment and “attacking” it with angle grinders, a judge was told.
One protester, named in a court document as Scott Breen, has dug himself in next to the M25 at Runnymede in Surrey in an effort to disrupt the installation of the replacement pipe, a court heard.
The Southampton-to-London pipeline project, which received development consent in October 2020, aims to replace 90km of pipe between Boorley Green in Hampshire and Esso’s west London terminal storage facility in Hounslow, near Heathrow airport.
Replacing the pipeline, originally constructed in 1972, will help keep 100 tankers a day off the road, Esso claims. It is due for completion next year.
Esso Petroleum Company Limited, owned by ExxonMobil, was granted an interim injunction against Breen and “persons unknown” after a hearing before Mr Justice Eyre at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Monday.
Timothy Morshead QC, representing Esso, said in written submissions that it urgently sought the injunction to prevent people from “conspiring to injure” its business “by unlawful means”.
“The unlawful means in question consist of the actual and threatened trespasses to goods and also to land which [Esso] has experienced – and which continues to be threatened against the pipeline project,” Morshead said.
“The activities carried out by some protesters go far beyond lawful and peaceful protest, and give rise to serious health and safety concerns.”
Morshead said the company sought an order only applying to acts “with the intention of preventing or impeding construction of the Southampton to London pipeline project”.
The barrister said Breen, “a known tunneller”, had dug himself into land owned by Runnymede borough council at a “sensitive” position near the motorway that was needed by Esso’s contractors for access.
“He has boasted about it on social media,” Morshead said.
Eyre said in his ruling that there was “material indicating an agreement between a number of persons to disrupt the construction of the pipeline, to do so by entry on to private land and/or land which is enclosed for the purposes of the construction of the pipeline”.
He said the purpose of this was to “harm” Esso “by preventing it building the pipeline which it is authorised to build”, and said there had been “threats of further disruption” posted on the internet.
The judge noted that protest action came against a background of “strongly held beliefs and concerns about the effect of air travel” and said he considered the “legitimate public interest in the changes to the climate”.
Eyre concluded that an injunction was “proportionate and necessary to ensure that [Esso] is permitted to carry on its lawful activities”.
He set a date of 7 September for when the injunction, which has geographical limits, will be reconsidered by the court.
The judge said he was “just about persuaded” to order an injunction against Breen, who was not represented at court.
He noted that on social media Breen had accepted that he had been asked to leave his pit, dug at Chertsey, by Esso and the council but he had not done so.
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